The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks

64 thrilling true stories of incredible escapes

This exhaustively researched collection of extraordinary prison breaks separates urban myth from the truth. It includes the true stories behind movies such as Catch Me if You Can, about the life of Frank Abagnale Jr, and Papillon, based on Henri Charrière’s questionable memoir of the same name, in which he claimed to have escaped from the supposedly inescapable Devil’s Island.

Other escapes include those of Bud Day, said to be the only US serviceman ever to have escaped to South Vietnam; the six prisoners who escaped from Death Row in Mecklenburg Correctional Center; the forty members of the Irish Republican Army who, in 1983, broke out of the highest security prison in Western Europe; Pascal Payet, the French armed robber who escaped not once, but twice from French prisons with the help of a helicopter; and the little-known first helicopter escape from an American jail, masterminded by conman Dale Remling.